


Kiss Me Once in the Snow (I Swear It Never Gets Old)

by peachchild



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Angst, Disney AU, Frozen AU, I have a problem okay?, M/M, Magical Realism, Misunderstandings, implied anxiety disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:17:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2210178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachchild/pseuds/peachchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Aidan had been friends their whole lives, until Dean took his chance to disappear and ran away to Chicago.</p><p>Now, ten years later, they've reconnected, and Dean is overjoyed, and also terrified that he will hurt him - or himself. </p><p>(It's a Frozen AU. You all know the plot, come on.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss Me Once in the Snow (I Swear It Never Gets Old)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ero0chibi0chan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ero0chibi0chan).



> Considering this is just under 4,000 words long, it took me an embarrassingly long time to finish. But it was meant as a graduation present for Kendra (who is strong in her attempts to get me to write an AU for every single Disney movie ever made), and now must also be considered a slightly belated birthday present, because I'm an asshole.
> 
> Title is from "[Every Thug Needs a Lady](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69d8JtwTgUQ)" by Alkaline Trio. 
> 
> If you're feeling masochistic, feel free to follow me on [Tumblr](http://peachchild.tumblr.com).

Dean stepped out of the _Times_ building with his scarf tucked in close around his neck and squinted against the sharp wind, up toward the sky. It wasn’t snowing yet, but the clouds, settling across the skyscrapers like white sheets gone grey over years of regular washings, promised flurries soon. Dean could feel them starting up in his blood, setting his cells on edge, like he might flutter away any second himself, and he pressed his teeth tightly together. If he wasn’t careful, he would call the snow down himself. 

He hitched his bag up higher on his shoulder, waited for a break in the crowd, and stepped out onto the sidewalk, letting the bustle carry him down the street. He liked Chicago, because it was filled with people as used to the cold as he was. Their cheeks still went pink with it, their breaths punctuated with sniffles, and they bundled into coats and hats and boots, but they didn’t complain. It was cold for most of the year, and they trudged on with their days.

Dean didn’t feel the cold - or at least didn’t feel it in the same way. He wore the uniform of Midwesterners in the cold mostly so that people wouldn’t pay more attention to him than necessary, but sometimes, when the nights were dark and quiet, and the snow spilled lazily down into the streets, he opened his window, stood naked in the gusts of air, and pulled the snow up around him, shifting like cloth against his skin. 

The hot dog cart had a line, even in January, but Dean didn’t mind. He settled in among the people hopping from foot to foot, hissing breaths out between clenched teeth, blowing on cold fingertips. He stuffed his own hands into his pockets, yawned lazily, let his mind trail off to the photos he had due on his editor’s desk in the next couple of days. He didn’t notice the man behind him for a long moment, despite the fact that he was staring at him intently through narrowed eyes. When he finally caught his gaze, he blinked, jerked his head back, startled. “Can I help you?”

The man grinned, and it was like a punch to the chest. “ _Dean_! I knew it was you.” 

“Jesus,” Dean breathed out and didn’t even mind being dragged into the tightest hug he’d had in a long time. “God, Aidan, it’s been - what? - ten years? How are you, man?”

“Good, good!” He nodded, pushed a stray curl out of his face from where it had slipped out from beneath his beanie. “Yeah, I’ve been living up here a few years now. I knew you lived in the city but wasn’t sure how to get in touch with you. What have you been doing?” 

“Not a lot.” Dean shrugged, discomfort starting up under his skin, shifting along his back. “I’m working at the _Times_ as a photographer.” 

“No shit? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, thanks.” Dean twitched the corner of his mouth up. “How about you? What are you doing with yourself?”

“Not a lot, ya know.” Aidan shrugged, suddenly bashful. “I work at a deli in Greektown. Not as a glamorous as being a _Times_ photographer, I know.”

“No, no, that’s great.” If there was one thing Dean ever knew about Aidan, it was that he could be perfectly happy doing any kind of job. It was so unlike him to be embarrassed of his work. “You’ll have to give me the address, I could pop in and have you make me a masterpiece.” 

“You really should, it’d be on the house.” Aidan pushed his shoulder. “But for real, we need to catch up. Can I call you?”

Dean gave him his number, just like that, because never in his life could he say no to Aidan.

* * * 

Aidan was the closest thing Dean had to a neighbor when he lived in Arkansas. Their families were close friends, even if their houses were separated by an expanse of wilderness. Aidan always managed to pop up at his window, grinning a broad, toothless grin, dirt smudged into the creases of his face from his tumbles through the woods. He was his best friend, and they spent their days catching bugs and getting sunburnt, or curling up in a blanket fort and reading _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ aloud to each other. 

Dean hadn’t seen Aidan since they graduated high school, when he took the opportunity he desperately needed to stumble his way out of that town and lost himself in a city big enough that his strangeness would go mostly unnoticed. And now, because ten years later he still couldn’t say no to Aidan, he was sitting across a table from him in a vegetarian restaurant in Wrigleyville, and Aidan was grinning at him the same way he always had, just with more teeth. 

“I didn’t know if you were still in that weird vegetarian phase you had when you were a senior,” he explained, even though Dean didn’t question the validity of his restaurant choice. “I wanted to make sure we went somewhere you could eat. Besides, I live up the street.” 

“I eat meat now,” Dean smiled fondly at him. “We ran into each other at a hot dog cart, remember?”

“Oh.” Aidan’s face fell. But he brightened again almost immediately. “Well, they still have good food here, regardless. And the staff’s really nice.” 

They went quiet for a long time, surveying their menus, and Dean could feel Aidan’s eyes flicking up to him every few seconds, could see his thoughts in the low set of his eyebrows over them, the downward curve of his mouth. He finally set the menu down harder than necessary and asked the question Dean had been dreading: “What _happened_ , Dean?”

He shrugged one shoulder, felt a flush creep up his neck. “Nothing.” 

“Something must’ve. One day we were graduating high school, the next you were just _gone_. Who does that?” There was hurt laced through Aidan’s voice. “We were supposed to go together. We always talked about it.” 

“Things change.”

“ _What_ changed?”

“ _I_ did.” Dean curled his hand around his glass, a little too tight, his jaw ticking. He didn’t notice the way ice crawled up, filmed over the top of his water. “It wasn’t you, Aidan. I know you think it was, but it wasn’t.”

Aidan sat back in his chair, some of the fight draining out of him, and he let his eyes flick out in the direction of the window behind Dean. “I thought… Well, I thought maybe it was because of what happened - you know? At prom?”

Dean’s eyes softened. “Aidan, I’d been waiting for you to kiss me for like, three years by that point. It was inevitable.” 

Aidan snorted out a laugh, tossed his curly hair off his face. “Well. I’m glad you feel that way. I’m completely considering this a date.”

“A _lunch_ date?” Dean quirked an eyebrow at him. “You really know how to make a boy feel special.” 

“I’m planning on kissing you again at the end of it, so watch your tone, mister.”

He did kiss him, after Dean walked him back to his apartment. They stood on the sidewalk outside of his building, and the snow came down around them, and Aidan cupped his face between gloved hands and pressed their mouths together, and for a moment, Dean felt summer around them, with the taste of watermelon and soda on Aidan’s tongue and the long grass creeping up over his shins, but then the snow came down, in hard, fast flurries, and Aidan laughed, surprised, and tilted his head back into it, and Dean memorized the look of snowflakes in his eyelashes.

* * * 

Aidan sat determinedly down on Dean’s lap, and Dean let out a little “ _oof_!” before sliding his hands around his back. “Hello to you too.”

“I have an important question.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” Aidan nodded solemnly, scratching his fingernails in little circles at the nape of Dean’s neck. “And I want you to tell me honestly.”

Dean hummed agreement, his eyes closed. “Yeah, okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you a virgin?”

“ _What_?”

“Are you. A virgin.” 

“No. No, I am not.”

“Okay.” Aidan pressed a hard kiss to his mouth and swung his leg off of him, plopping heavily down on the couch beside him. “What are you reading?” 

“ _Rolling Stone_. Or I was but you’ve crumpled up all the pages.” He wiggled the magazine so that its pages flapped noisily, then dropped it on the couch cushion. “But honestly, you do not think you’re going to come running in here to ask if I’m a virgin and then I’m going to let you drop it, do you?” 

Aidan shrugged, propping his elbow on the back of the couch and pushing his fingers into his curls. “I just thought I should ask. We’ve been dating almost a month and you’re not putting out at all, sir.” He poked him pointedly in the stomach. “I thought maybe you were - I dunno - apprehensive about it? Lack of experience or something.” 

“Trust me, I am not apprehensive because of lack of experience.”

“But you _are_ apprehensive?” 

“You’re putting words in my mouth.” 

“Am not. Just reading between the lines.” Aidan nuzzled a kiss against his jaw. “At first I thought maybe you weren’t attracted to me that way, but that can’t be the case, right?”

Dean barked out a laugh at that. “No, it cannot.” He caught Aidan’s free hand, pressed his fingertips lightly against his boyfriend’s. “It’s not that, definitely. It’s… Well, it’s complicated. I’m not sure how to explain it to you.” 

“You don’t have to, if you’re not ready to,” Aidan said quietly. “I can wait. I just thought maybe if I put it out there, you’d know the door was open to talk about it.” 

“I’m…” _scared_ , he wanted to say. But he wasn’t sure that was the word for it. It wasn’t really fear. It was certainty - certainty that the second he stopped trying to keep himself in control, he would _lose_ control. And he didn’t want to hurt anyone - especially not Aidan. He surged forward, kissed him so suddenly that Aidan made a surprised sound in his throat, his hand flying up to Dean’s hair. 

They stayed that way for a long time, stretched out together on the couch, touching and kissing, Aidan’s warm body spread out under him, his hot mouth parted, fingertips pressing at his shoulders, and Dean felt a surge of affection for him - the same kind of affection that sent him scrabbling through the woods and to Aidan’s house, covered in grass stains, to see his friend waiting for him, all toothless grins and bare feet. 

Aidan tilted his head back, laughing, and Dean nuzzled in against his neck, nipping kisses there. “So if we’re not going to be going on with this, we might want to ease up a little.” As if to make a point, he shifted slightly, pressed himself against Dean’s hip, and Dean could feel him hard through his jeans. 

“Let me,” Dean found himself saying, his voice a sigh, and he pushed Aidan up against the arm of the couch, fumbled to open his pants, and had his mouth on him in a moment. Aidan pushed his arm back under his head, the fingers of his other hand bunched tightly in the shoulder of Dean’s shirt, and let his hips stutter up against the hot suction of his mouth, and Dean let him slide over his tongue, let him set the pace, peered up at him to find his eyes closed, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, a flush creeping up his neck, and when he came, he made a sound like it hurt, and on the back of it followed Dean’s name, like a mantra, “ _DeanDeanDeanDean_ ,” and Dean wanted to hear that over and over, wanted to take him apart again and again. 

Aidan pulled him up, pressed his thumb against Dean’s bottom lip, then dragged him close to kiss him, and Dean wrapped his arms tight around him, and didn’t notice the frost creeping up the inside of his window. 

* * * 

“Okay.” Aidan was laughing, which wasn’t unusual. Aidan was almost always laughing. When he wasn’t laughing, he was kissing Dean or stuffing French fries into his mouth or taking big wincing gulps of coffee or snoring or looking so intently at whoever was talking to him (usually Dean) that he could be almost certain than any second now, Aidan was just going to unhinge his jaw and swallow him. 

But right now, he was laughing, and pushing at Dean’s chest, flailing in a wild attempt to get into a vertical position on their bed. Dean allowed him to get his back pressed to the headboard, then resumed his attack on his neck, sucking kisses there. Aidan allowed this, scratching his fingers through his hair. “As much as I enjoy and really, truly appreciate the vast amount of sexual attention you are constantly doting on me, I would love at some point to return the favor.”

It was not the first time they’d returned to this conversation. “No need.”

“No _need_?” Aidan aimed a stinging flick to his temple, and Dean yelped, jumping back a little. “No need? What am I - a golden retriever?” 

Dean rubbed his temple. “What?”

“Am I a dog or something? I don’t get you the least bit hard?”

“How crude,” Dean scolded.

“You’ve had my dick in your mouth. I think I’m allowed to be crude,” Aidan deadpanned. He moved to sit up straight, crisscrossing his legs. “But, seriously, you gotta level with me a little bit here. Are you attracted to me at all?” 

It was such a difference, this Aidan, verging on insecure, the corners of his mouth drawn tight, and Dean wondered if he wondered this all the time, whether Dean said he wanted him just to reassure him, whether he was just putting on a show to make him happy. 

“ _Aidan_ ,” Dean breathed, reached to palm a hand over Aidan’s knee. “Of course I am.”

“Am I doing something wrong? Making you feel - I dunno - uncomfortable? Unsafe? All you have to do is tell me and I’ll stop.” 

“It’s not you, Aidan.” Dean felt terror clawing up the inside of his throat. _This_ was why he didn’t do relationships. This is why he had been avoiding this kind of contact for so long. He didn’t want to have this conversation. “Please. I swear it’s not you.” 

“Then what is it?” Aidan’s eyes had taken that soft, warm quality that reminded Dean of baking chocolate, the way it starts solid, then melts across the pan, spreading out liquid and sweet. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yes, of course. And when I figure out how to tell you this, I will.” Dean kissed his cheek and pushed himself off the bed. He did his best to not frost the doorknob on his way out of the bedroom.

* * * 

Things changed after that. Dean knew they would, and they did. It wasn’t Aidan, of course. Aidan was still the sunshine of his life. (He felt silly thinking that even as he did, but there was no more suitable way to describe his role in Dean’s days.) He still greeted him by cupping his face between his big hands and kissing him full on the mouth like they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. He still hummed Rolling Stones songs in the kitchen as he tried (and failed) to make omelets in the morning. He still looked at Dean like he couldn’t quite believe that he’d had the luck to find him, not just once, as children stumbling through dirt as barefoot as Tom Sawyer, but again as adults, on the cold winter streets of Chicago.

But Dean felt the cold in his fingertips. He thought of Aidan, and all of the things he couldn’t give him, and was afraid to touch anything. The city saw a cold front so unexpected that people began to question the science of weather forecasting, wondered aloud if the satellites could malfunction in such an immense way. Aidan appeared in his apartment, day after day, with the wind tattooed red on the apples of his cheeks, almost unrecognizable buried under layers of hats and scarves and mittens. He joked that his Arkansas blood hadn’t thickened enough yet to survive this kind of cold.

Then one day, Aidan didn’t joke at all. He sat on the couch, his fingers buried in his curls, and studied Dean with one of those looks he got sometimes, like he was overtly realizing something that had been sitting under his skin for weeks. His eyelashes fluttered, like he was suddenly tired and could no longer stay awake. 

“You aren’t happy.”

Dean raised his gaze from the magazine in his lap, surprised. He’d known a revelation of some kind was on the horizon, but he hadn’t expected that. “Excuse me?”

“You - you aren’t happy.” Aidan shrugged one shoulder, took a deep breath through his nose and sat up, giving the arm he was leaning on a break. “I don’t know how I didn’t notice it sooner. Well - maybe I did. Maybe I pretended I didn’t so I could keep pretending this was working.”

Dean’s throat closed. He searched for words but couldn’t find them, caught by the image of Aidan sitting there, bathed in the cool grey of the winter light, streaking in from the window. 

It was just as well, because Aidan was still talking. “I didn’t really want to think about it, but you’ve had the same look about you that you had right after I kissed you - back in high school. That first time. Remember? You looked fucking terrified. And your hands were so cold. You ran away so fast.” He shrugged. “I guess I sort of thought you had outgrown some of that - that fear or shame or whatever it was. But I guess you haven’t. You still look at me with this… I don’t even know.” He laughed, a bitter sound, like the last dregs of a cup of strong black tea. “I have no idea what to call that look. It’s not a flattering one.”

Dean couldn’t contain it. He felt the ice starting to creak out from his hands, settling in a wet frost over his armchair, across the pages of his magazine. He saw it sweep along the curls at the base of Aidan’s neck, saw him shiver. Aidan himself didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at Dean with his eyebrows drawn low, his mouth a sharp slash across his face. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he demanded, and the ice leapt up the curtains like fire, turned them into hanging icicles. They tinkled slightly as they knocked against each other. “Dammit, Dean, maybe I was always more invested in this than you were, but you could at least do me the courtesy of saying _something_.”

“I…” Dean’s voice froze in his throat, and he clenched his fists, squeezed his eyes closed. 

Aidan’s temper flared, hot in the middle of the room. He was suddenly on his feet. “I _love_ you, Dean. I know we don’t say it that often, but I do. You don’t even respect that enough to have the fucking decency of breaking up with me like an adult? You let it come to _this_?”

“I don’t want to break up,” Dean breathed out. “I love you.”

“You have a hell of a way of showing it.”

“What do you _want_?” he sobbed, and the window in which Aidan was framed creaked suddenly, frozen over. “What do you want from me, Aidan? I’ve been giving everything I _can_.” A sharp wind started up through the living room, and Aidan turned to check if the balcony doors had blown open. He looked back at Dean just as the snow flurries burst up around them. 

“Dean…” Aidan’s voice was gentler, as a realization seemed to dawn on him. His curls blew across his face, and Dean thought of their childhood games, when he _could_ control it, when he could conjure up just enough snow to shove down Aidan’s shirt, making him run yelping out of the house, or to pile in a clear spot in the woods for snow angels or impromptu snowball fights. Aidan seemed to remember them too, suddenly, like ripping up something long buried. “Dean, stop.” 

“I _can’t_.” Dean couldn’t move, couldn’t stand, could only watch the wind whip papers and curtains around them, could only watch the snow drifts pile up against the walls. Aidan pushed his way toward him through the chaos, wrapped his arms around his head and cradled him against his chest.

“You _can_ ,” Aidan insisted, his mouth pressed to his hair. “You’ve done it before. Come on, breathe for me.” 

Dean clutched him, breathed deeply the scent of him, that warm laundry smell that followed him around, as if he’d only just taken his clothes from the dryer, grounded himself to the feeling of his long fingers cupped around the back of his neck, the sweeping feel of his lungs expanding and retracting beneath his ear. The wind died down, but the snow didn’t stop, just continued to lazily drift down around them. Aidan made himself comfortable on Dean’s knee, ran his fingers through his hair. “Is this what you’ve been worried about?” he asked quietly. There was a long pause in which Dean didn’t answer and Aidan seemed to be unable to think of anything else to say. Then, “I forgot all about your magic.” 

“That was by design. Your parents weren’t a fan.” Dean wrinkled his nose. “There was a… thing. A spell? I’m not sure. We were really young. I just remember my dad taking me out back and telling me that I could still be your friend, but I couldn’t talk to you at all about my magic because you wouldn’t remember. It was better that way, I guess. Your parents threatened to out me.” 

“Typical. My parents aren’t exactly my favorite people for a number of reasons. I might as well add this to the list.” Aidan snorted, kissed his forehead. “But let’s make one thing really fucking clear.”

Dean’s heart lay right at the back of his tongue, beating so hard it threatened to choke him. “What?”

Aidan kissed him, open-mouthed, slow and sweet. When he pulled away, his grin was devilish. “If you accidentally make it snow while I’m making you come, I will be tickled fucking pink.” 

And Dean laughed until he couldn’t breathe, and then he cried into Aidan’s shirt, the exhausted, hiccoughing sobs of the terribly relieved, and Aidan seemed to understand, and let him. 

* * * 

Later, when they were sprawled naked in their bed, Aidan’s body a warm blanket, he pressed his lips to Dean’s shoulder and told him he had snowflakes in his eyelashes.

**Author's Note:**

> Stay tuned for a ridiculous coda in which shower sex goes horribly wrong!


End file.
